"Coquam Cibum." Bellatrix made a sharp triangular motion with her wand as she stood before the cast iron skillet, her bare feet cold on the wooden floorboards of the kitchen. She scowled as she blew a few stray curls from her eyes and focused hard on the cooking spell the Dark Lord had taught her, trying to get the sausages in the skillet to sear and simmer to perfection. She held the spell determinedly, but very rapidly, the sausages blackened and withered, and it was quickly evident that Bellatrix had overdone her cooking spell and completely burnt the food. She growled in irritation and tossed her wand down on the butcher block counter beside the hob, tossing her head back and huffing a slightly enraged breath.

"Smells like scorched pork," murmured a low, amused voice from behind her, and Bellatrix managed to smirk just a little as she drummed her fingers on the countertop. She felt large, strong hands come up behind her and course around the waist of her black cotton dress, and as Voldemort caressed her torso, he pressed his lips to her jaw and made her shiver. He laughed a little under his breath then and hummed near her ear, "Mmm. Looks like scorched pork. You only have to hold the Roasting Charm for about five seconds, Bella. Any longer and you'll char the meat so it's inedible."

"Yes, My Lord," Bellatrix grumbled. "I'm sorry."

She watched him then as, with a few flicks of his wand, he Vanished her ruined sausages from the skillet, Scoured the burnt ashes from it, Summoned some fresh bangers from the larder, and set about cooking them himself. Bellatrix smiled a little, feeling oddly peaceful as she felt him looming behind her. She felt the warmth of his body pressing against hers; he was still shirtless from sleep, and his torso and arms nearly consumed her from behind. He curled his left arm around her waist and drew her against him, and with his right arm, he aimed his bony yew wand at the skillet and incanted quite sternly,

"Coquam Cibum."

She watched the expert triangular flick of his wand, watched the sausages instantly begin to brown, and smelled the deliciousness of them cooking to perfection. After just a few seconds, when smoke had begun to rise off the skillet, Voldemort snapped his wand away and cleared his throat, and the sizzling sound in the iron skillet went quiet. The sausages, it seemed, were finished. He'd done them perfectly. Well, of course he had. He always seemed to know precisely what he was doing. It would be frustrating, perhaps, if Bellatrix weren't completely mad about him, if she weren't so hopelessly devoted to him.

She turned around in his grasp to face him, prepared to tease him a little, with just a hint of about audacity, about how she'd never expected Lord Voldemort himself to be quite so adept at cooking sausages. But her witty barbs were silenced on her lips as she arranged herself and looked up at him, and her mouth fell open in shock. She knew her eyes must be as round as the bowls into which The Dark Lord had already ladled porridge oats for the two of them. She just stared, rather dumbly, until his lips curled up with great amusement and he cocked an eyebrow.

"That dramatic a change, is it? And here I did it because I was rather short on hair and I thought it was more dignified at this point."

Bellatrix finally felt a wide grin cross her face, and she dared to let one of her hands go up to her master's scalp, from which he'd shorn off all of his hair. He narrowed his eyes at her, as if reading her take on what he'd done, as her fingertips drifted over the minuscule bit of stubble left by his Shaving Spell. He had indeed had a receding hairline before, and his hair had been mostly grey. She knew that he was forty-five years of age, and so for him to be balding and to look aged was normal, but perhaps he was not comfortable with it. He did look very different like this, somehow. He looked starker, like the warmonger he needed to be during this moment in wizarding history. Bellatrix found herself just a little breathless, and as her smile faded a little, she finally murmured to him,

"It suits you, My Lord… perfectly. It makes you look commanding. Tough. A bit intimidating. I… I like it."

She felt her cheeks go hot, and she struggled to swallow past the thickness in her throat then. Voldemort's arms were still around her waist, and when at last her eyes met his again, he squared his jaw and looked like he wanted her physically. But he cleared his throat and shut his eyes for a moment, and he finally said softly,

"There's, erm… I'll brew up some tea if… you can slice up an apple for us, surely."

"Oh. Yes. Well, I learnt my way around a knife for Potions lessons at Hogwarts, My Lord," Bellatrix said a little awkwardly, and he just nodded. Bellatrix finally extricated herself from him then, and a few moments later, the two of them were seated at the stodgy wooden table in the kitchen, eating their little breakfasts of porridge, sausages, apples, and tea. Bellatrix watched across the table as Voldemort hurried to consume his food, and she realised she was eating quite slowly.

He Scoured his dishes clean, Vanished his scraps, and Banished everything to the cupboards whilst she was still only halfway through her meal, and she was wide-eyed with wonder as she watched him go into the sitting room and stalk over to a Wizarding Wireless he seemed to have acquired and brought here whenever he'd procured the safe house. He flicked the radio on and fiddled with the dials for a little while until he found what he wanted, and then the metallic static finally turned into sounds that Bellatrix could make sense of. She spooned the last few bites of porridge into her mouth as she listened to a rather tense-sounding voice on the radio.

"... as a result of critical intelligence received from a highly trustworthy informant, Minister for Magic Eugenia Jenkins wishes to warn the public that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his followers may be particularly dangerous at this time. We can confirm that the whereabouts of several of the so-called Death Eaters are currently missing. These individuals have been identified to the Ministry and include very notable individuals such as Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood, Abraxas Malfoy, Rabastan Lestrange, Bellatrix Lestrange, and many others."

Bellatrix's spoon clattered down as she gulped the last of her porridge and stared at the Dark Lord. He was standing in the sitting room with his hands clasped behind his back and gazing at his own bare feet in consternation. Bellatrix felt cold as she rushed to stand and clean and clear her dishes, still listening to the broadcast.

" The Ministry for Magic wishes to reassure wizarding Britain that the Auror force is already hard at work raiding the homes and offices of known Death Eaters and of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, interrogating any House-Elves and family members, and speaking with students at Hogwarts whose parents are known Death Eaters. Your Ministry will protect you, and you will be safe at the end of all of this. We ask for your patience and your cooperation. Look out for one another and stay on the side of goodness. With that, let us have some music to lighten the mood."

The broadcast shifted away from the wartime declaration then, and through the slight crackling sound from the wireless speaker, Bellatrix heard the sound of a beautiful piece of choral polyphony begin to play. It was haunting and lovely, but it was not light and not easy. She felt her own stomach sink like a stone as she manually put her bowl back in the cupboard and then shut the door, padding with her bare feet on the wooden floorboards to slowly approach Voldemort. When she reached him, she stood near him and murmured,

"Everything. He told them everything, Master. Not just information about Manchester. He gave them a list of every Death Eater. Probably information about past missions that they could use against us in trials. Everything. He told them -"

"Yes. His betrayal was more complete than I could have imagined," Voldemort hissed. Bellatrix watched his fists ball at his sides. She imagined Rodolphus in her mind then, seeing his rather boyish and innocent face, his light and sparkling eyes, his wavy hair. She frowned deeply and admitted,

"He was jealous. He grew angry. But he believed in you, My Lord; I knew he did. I never would have thought him capable of something like this."

Voldemort whirled on her so quickly then that she staggered backwards a step, a bit frightened all of a sudden. He was rather terrifying with his newly-shaven head. His dark eyes seemed to stand out more without any hair on his head. His teeth glinted more within his snarl. He looked like a furious lion, and Bellatrix shivered. His face softened as he perceived her fear, and he finally asked her,

"Was he ever duplicitous that you observed? In any other way?"

Bellatrix hesitated, finally righting herself and nearing Voldemort again. She reached up to his bare chest, stroking at his sternum for a moment and then moving her fingertips to the enormous scar he'd suffered long ago in Prague. She nodded then and informed him,

"There was a time, during our last year at Hogwarts, My Lord, when Rodolphus and I were meant to spend the evening together. Bonding time, you know, before our wedding. Well, he lied to me and told me he had to revise for an exam, but he didn't. Instead, he snuck into an abandoned classroom with a few friends, and they worked their way through a bottle of firewhisky. I was in the Slytherin Common Room when they all staggered in drunk. He didn't account for me staying up late and catching him in his lie. But, yes, My Lord. He was duplicitous, on several occasions, toward me."

Voldemort seethed through his teeth and glanced away as he shrugged and conceded, "Perhaps I was a bit of a fool. To fuck you on the table in front of everyone. It was a risk, I admit. I relied on his loyalty and obedience even through a power play like that. A truly subservient Death Eater would have borne the humiliation of watching his wife be taken like that in front of a crowded room, to watch her enjoy it. A truly trustworthy Death Eater would have happily agreed to you becoming my mistress. But it seems that his envy and possessiveness far outweighed any allegiance toward me. I was an idiot not to see that."

Bellatrix's eyes welled heavily, and her fingers tightened on his chest as she whispered, "Well, then, My Lord, I am very sorry for seducing you into such unwise actions that harmed your cause."

"No." He met her eyes then and reached up to hold her wrist. He dragged his thumb around her inner forearm, and at his touch, her Dark Mark seared like fire. She gasped, and he stroked again, making her flush hot and damp between her legs. Her knees buckled a little, but Voldemort held her gaze and mumbled, "My mistake was not reading his character sooner and eliminating him earlier on. That is all. And that is my own error. It's nothing to do with you; I have no regrets whatsoever about any action undertaken with you, Bella."

"Oh." She just nodded, and then the house felt very quiet except for the choral music that was coming from the wireless. Bellatrix just kept staring up at Voldemort, until finally he looked her up and down and asked in an amused little voice,

"How do you like your Muggle dress?"

Bellatrix gave him a cheeky little smile. She took a step back from him and did a dramatic, dancing sort of twirl that sent her curls flying, and she curtsied to him with a flourish. Her A-line black cotton dress billowed about her, and she laughed a little as she shrugged and said,

"It isn't so very bad, My Lord. You've a keen eye for fashion."

He rolled his eyes and muttered, "I think you'd look fine in a black burlap sack, Bella, so. Difficult to find clothes that don't suit you, probably."

She froze at that, because for all the while she'd served him as a Death Eater, she'd longed for the slightest compliment from him. Not so very long ago, the littlest bit of eye contact or verbal communication from him had felt like a feast. Now, he was pink-cheeked as he averted his eyes after essentially telling her she looked pretty in whatever she wore. Bellatrix thought back to the night earlier, when she'd been naked in bed and had told him she adored him, and he'd said it was mutual.

Suddenly she realised something rather serious, and utterly terrifying, and her breath hitched in her lungs. She felt just a little bit nauseated as her eyes fluttered shut. She let out a helpless little noise and finally suggested,

"I think I'll… erm… I think… you said there was a beach nearby, My Lord?"

He seemed a little baffled then and glanced behind him, out the large window that led out onto Mermaid Street. Bellatrix could see that it was a dark and cloudy morning; it looked like it was threatening a very cold rain at best. Voldemort pursed his lips as he turned back to Bellatrix and affirmed,

"Camber Sands is not far. You could Apparate there if you focused on it. I'll show you on a map where to go so you don't Splinch, if you like. Bundle up; it's cold and you'll get wet on those tidal sands. I can't come. I need to begin trying to figure out where you damned hus… where Rodolphus might have gone off to."

She nodded quite firmly, flashing him just the hint of a smile. "Right. Camber Sands. I shall pass a few hours there, My Lord. Thank you."

She hurried away to get herself appropriately swathed in warmer outerwear, and as she moved towards the stairs, Voldemort called after her,

"Bella."

She stopped on the third step, and Voldemort sighed up at her. He shrugged.

"If you were Rodolphus Lestrange, and you'd defected away from my movement… where would you be right now?"

Bellatrix shut her eyes and thought hard. She and Rodolphus had had a safe house, just like everyone else, but Rodolphus wouldn't have been stupid enough to use it. It had been a little cottage on Jersey. Rodolphus wouldn't have gone there; Voldemort knew where it was. He wouldn't be at any of the Lestrange properties, or at any of his friends' places. And Bellatrix knew about the various inns and wizarding tourist locales he'd frequented in his life, even before his mother had -

His mother.

Bellatrix's face snapped up, and her mouth dropped open. Voldemort's eyebrows raised, and he looked quite interested. Bellatrix nodded quickly, and in a breathless tone, she informed Voldemort,

"Rodolphus' mother died when he was nine. An accident, you know."

Voldemort nodded. "Yes. I knew her. She was a bit younger than me at school. Mulberry, her name was. She died handling a Cursed family heirloom. She was a member of a minor branch of the Macmillan family."

"Yes. Yes. " Bellatrix clapped her hands rather obnoxiously. "A minor branch, My Lord. Rodolphus always told me that his mother Mulberry married up when she married his father Rasmus Lestrange. And my understanding is that his mother Mulberry grew up somewhat impoverished by the standards of the Sacred Twenty-Eight… quite an embarrassment for her until she died. She never took the boys to her childhood home, but they knew where it was, and he told me once. Once. "

Voldemort's face shifted, and suddenly he looked very serious. "Where?"

Bellatrix felt her voice shake then as she said, "A house in an area called Pogmoor in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, My Lord."

Voldemort's dark eyes flashed wildly from where he stood, and he nodded solemnly. "Once again, Bella, you are a good and loyal servant," he said. "Go stand by the sea for a little while. I will do what I must to get the address. If I confirm that is where he is, you'll come with me to kill him, won't you? I want you to watch me."

She just nodded numbly. "Of course, My Lord. Always, I will do everything you ask of me… everything that pleases you."

"Good." His face was odd then. His eyes shone just a bit, and he curled his lips up as he said again, "Go stand by the sea. My wonderful acolyte, My Bella. We shall regroup in a little while, and soon you shall serve me again. Go. The ocean air will do you well."

Bellatrix bowed her head. "Master."

She did nothing but watch the waves come in for over two hours.

She just stood there, on Camber Sands' rather delightful stretch of beach with rivulets of water running calmly around her boots from behind her toward the sea at low tide. It was soothing, she thought, behind surrounded by water like this. The fresh water from the river that fed into the sea breathed its way into the ocean, and the waves pulsed their way gently in and out. Tiny grains of sand and slightly larger shells were tossed helplessly about, tumbled through the clear, frigid water. The sky overhead was a blue-grey, menacing a storm that never actually materialised. The January air was biting cold, and by two hours in, Bellatrix's cheeks felt chapped and her nose was running and her lips were numb. Bellatrix could easily see this beach exploding with holidaying Muggles in hot summer weather, but owing to the inclement winter conditions, Bellatrix did not see another soul the entire time she stood on Camber Sands.

It was glorious.

By the time she'd been there for over two hours, though, Bellatrix was no longer alone, because there was a quiet little crack around twenty metres to her left. She gasped softly, pushing her braided curls from her eyes in the harsh wind at the sound and grasping her wand more tightly in case she was being ambushed. But when she saw that it was her lord and master who had Apparated onto the beach near her, she immediately dipped into a reverent obeisance, bowing her head, and she acknowledged him,

"My Lord."

He stalked quickly toward her, his flat boots crisp on the wet sand, and he wordlessly grasped her face in his hands, wrenching her up and drawing her close to his body. Bellatrix went wide-eyed at his assertiveness, and when she saw the black fire in his expression, the stiffness in his jaw… when the felt the slight quiver in his touch on her cheeks and heard the accompanying shake in his breath, she knew. She knew there had been violence.

"You've found him," she hummed, and he nodded wordlessly.

"I wanted you to watch me," he said, and his voice was so uncharacteristically quiet that Bellatrix could hardly hear him over the wind and the waves. His rough hands tightened on his cheeks, and his breath quickened and grew rickety. His eyes were downright feral then as he repeated in a cracked tone,

"What I wanted, Bella, was for you to come with me and watch me mutilate that stupid, insolent little traitor. I wanted for you to come with me and watch me take my time slicing him open and taking out his organs, gouging his eyes out, castrating him, giving him a good Cruciatus Curse… and then executing him. You understand?"

Bellatrix felt strange then, but she nodded and whispered, "Yes, My Lord. I understand."

Voldemort's throat bobbed under his thick black waffle wave robe, and he began to stroke almost affectionately at Bellatrix's face, his touch strangely gentle given the rather ferocious expression on his face and the topic of violence they were discussing. It was oddly incongruous, the way he was cosseting her jaw and then her neck whilst he continued speaking about his fantasies of murder.

"I wanted you to watch me slaughter the boy who was fool enough to call himself your husband, Bella, and brainless enough to commit treason. But I confess… I could not contain my own lust to enact revenge. To butcher him like livestock the moment I saw him."

Bellatrix flinched and found herself breathless. For a moment, she couldn't even hear the waves crashing on Camber Sands. She just blinked a few times and stared up at her master, at the wizard who had shaved his head and now looked like a terrifying warlord, at the man whom she… whom she…

"You saw him," she repeated, and Voldemort nodded crisply. His hands kept working over Bellatrix's skin as if he were deriving enormous pleasure just from feeling her, and he informed her in an urgent, low voice,

"Your instincts were quite right, and for that I am profoundly grateful, Bella. I went there - I went to Barnsley. I went to Pogmoor and I cast one Confundus Charm after another on the hapless Muggles until I tracked down the Macmillan family home. Turns out the impoverished wizarding family had been living among the Muggles for generations; they weren't hidden like the Blacks in Grimmauld Place in London."

Bellatrix nodded fervently. "So you found the house."

Voldemort licked his lips. "Horrid place. Wretched, ramshackle terraced house badly in need of repair. On Prince Arthur Street, for what that's worth. I found it and I snuck into the top level, quietly and surreptitiously. Found Rodolphus alone in the sitting room downstairs. I meant to take my time. I meant to play games with him. But I just put the boy into a Full-Body Bind and gave him a lecture about why he was about to die, about what a bloody fucking fool he'd been, about how he'd lost everything - how he'd lost his own life and the war and most importantly his wife - and then I murdered him and left the body where it lay. And then I came straight here."

Bellatrix trembled where she stood, and not from the January chill on the beach. She nodded. She should be mourning, she thought. Her husband had been murdered. But instead, she felt a swell of enormous satisfaction. The Dark Lord had executed a traitor. This would help his movement; this would instill abject terror into his enemies, as their ' highly trustworthy informant ' would eventually be discovered murdered. So much for the Ministry's assurances of control and pleas for calm over the Wireless. It was as Lord Voldemort had said. Rodolphus had thought he'd accomplished something great with his indiscretion, and whilst it had been an inconvenience that names and battle plans had been revealed, Rodolphus had sacrificed much more. He'd lost his own life, he'd set the Dark Lord to raging, and -

"Bella," Voldemort said roughly then, and he lowered his face until his lips were brushing against hers. She just nodded, feeling dizzy suddenly. She wanted to tell him how amazed she was, how proud she was to be his slave, how terrible and wonderful he was. But all she could do was kiss him back when he pressed his lips to hers. He touched his palm to her lower back and cradled her neck with his other fingers, and that felt so good that Bellatrix moaned just a little. He tasted like salt, like the sea air. He was warm, so much warmer than the whipping wind. She held his upper arm, clutching him with a fierce grip as her other hand instinctively snaked up to his head, feeling the scalp from which he'd shorn his hair, coursing over the bare skin there, pressing her fingers and palm firmly to his head. Voldemort deepened their kiss, his tongue dragging along the roof of her mouth a few times until she mewled helplessly and nearly collapsed. He held her firmly up against him and then suckled her lip, growling against her as she started to feel faint, lost in him. When at last he pulled his mouth from hers, their warm breath shared between them, urgent and shallow, Bellatrix heard herself rather desperately inform him,

"I'm in love with you, Master. I… I'm so sorry, but… I've been standing out here on this damned beach for hours and I… I've been thinking about it the whole while and now you've come here and told me all of this and I… I can't help… I'm sorry, My Lord, but I do love you and I…"

She trailed off, feeling like a complete fool, suddenly panicking about what would happen to her, but when she pulled back just a little bit to read his reaction, Voldemort just nodded seriously at her. He carefully set her on the sand before him and looked her up and down, and then he said quietly,

"He's gone. Rodolphus. He's gone forever now, and you've Vanished your rings. You are entirely unencumbered… except, of course, for your Dark Mark, which binds you eternally to me. So, it could be said, accurately, I should think, that you now belong entirely to me. That you belong to me in every conceivable way. Would you agree?"

Bellatrix's lips parted in wonder, but she nodded. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes. Of course, My Lord. I'm entirely yours."

He nodded again as his robe whipped around him in the wind that was tormenting the beach. He glanced out the grey sea, staring at the waves as he pronounced,

"Well. I confess myself utterly intoxicated by you, Bella. Downright infatuated, as it happens. I have no desire to resist it. I am obviously quite pleased that Rodolphus is dead, for a good many reasons. One of them is that you are now… entirely mine."

He was silent then, and Bellatrix found she had nothing to say, so she just stood there like a little idiot until finally Voldemort turned his eyes back to her and said solemnly,

"I am going to go to a few of the safe houses to inform important Death Eaters of Rodolphus' death and the next steps. Abraxas. Rabastan. Rookwood. Yaxley. Nott. Avery. I need to calm nerves, solidify loyalty, make plans. You understand."

"Yes, My Lord," Bellatrix nodded. He sniffed then and shifted on his feet.

"Once we get control of the situation and come out of hiding, I'm going to arrange some sort of social event for the Death Eaters at Malfoy Manor to raise morale. To show my followers that we are not going to continue living in hiding throughout this war. We are going to steer this ship; we are not rats in holes. When that event occurs, you and I shall make our official debut."

Bellatrix felt shock go from the base of her spine up to her neck and she shook her head, blinking a few times. "Of-Official debut, My Lord?"

He tipped his head. "Have you got some sort of issue with arriving to a party on the arm of the Dark Lord and remaining there as his official… erm… as the witch whom he…"

He glanced at the waves again and seemed to struggle again, dragging his dragonhide boot on the wet sand until he finally snapped his face to Bellatrix and huffed,

"I wish for it to made quite plain to everyone that you are not just some casual paramour. It isn't just a little anymore. It's become much more than that, hasn't it? It is of great importance to me that that becomes obvious from this point forward."

Bellatrix bowed her head. "Yes. Of course, My Lord."

"Right," he said. "I'm going to the other safe houses. Get back to the house on Mermaid Street and stay there. You never know what'll happen now that Rodolphus is dead."

Without another word, he Disapparated into a blurry black whorl, leaving Bellatrix astonished and alone on the beach at Camper Sands.